In Makerspaces students are given opportunities to work with technology, bring ideas to life, interact with peers and educators in new ways, and learn to problem solve, as well as, providing an environment in which they can make mistakes and learn from them. With all of the opportunities for learning that they offer, makerspaces may hold the key to unlocking the potential for innovation in our students and our economy.

"The study also compared the skills needed today to those from 1980 and found that overall there has been a 68% increase in the amount of education and training necessary to succeed in the workforce. With the market’s increased demand for talented workers who are skilled in technology and communication, the opportunities that makerspaces generate for learning many of these skills are more important than ever before." (Matthew Lynch, 2018)

What does the 4th Industrial Revolution look like? How can we ensure we're preparing and growing talent for the jobs of the future? The ASEAN+3 countries hosted a conference in partnership with World Bank and the Korean government to answer those questions.

In addition to all the marketing, graphic design, website building, and content creation activities that take place when you create an app, the students are learning brainstorming and social entrepreneurship.

They’re also learning how to collaborate with other students around the world. And that’s perhaps the most challenging aspect of what we do.

By challenging the assumption that every child growing up today is a one-size-fits all digital native, we can make sure each of them can find their own way to relate to technology — whether using it to accomplish basic tasks or to create new technologies and worlds. Being aware of our kids’ differences now is what could help keep them from drifting apart.

A much more nuanced view, and one that I appreciate. I have long called so-called digital natives "digital naives" because the majority of kids only know enough about tech to use it to accomplish what they wish to accomplish. Tech does not really come any easier for them. Tech is simply more common to them.

One challenge facing educational start-ups is that many technologists don’t have real world teaching experience or have been out of the school system for so long that they’re out of touch with the classroom experience. And teachers who may have dynamic ideas for software or apps in education don’t have the technical know-how, access to investment, or experience starting a company from scratch.

"Virtual reality in education is a really exciting time in children, and adults, lives. There is something amazing about being immersed in a 3D environment that compels students to come back for more. Students are able to absorb information in a 3D world, while having an engaging and fun experience. There are many platforms for students to use, such as Google Cardboard, Daydream, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR. For an out of this world learning experience, here are 12 of the best virtual reality education apps available for STEM learning."

We’re all getting used to the thought that in a not-so-distant future, competition for jobs won’t just be other humans, it will also be an intelligent robot, self-driving car, or other artificial agent. But in our gut, we know this can’t be the full truth, that there’s a more nuanced story. We at least believe that elite human skills will remain valuable even as automation eats the world. The hard part is figuring out which ones will be the most valuable and where they will be the most prized.

One of the most common failings of education technology implementations and integrations are the result of insufficient of or poorly designed professional development for the faculty who are expected to change their practices and embrace new solutions. You can't conduct training once prior to a launch and simply expect everyone to be on board.

I absolutely love all of the new robotics toys that have been coming out for elementary age learners. I have been using them for my summer maker camp, with my gifted education classes, and for my upcoming Saturday morning program. One of my gifted girls noted, “Where do all of these robots come from?” I laughed and told her, “It’s actually has become one of my passions. Collecting them has become a major hobby of mine.”

I usually use them for an hour per week with my two groups of gifted learners. I am an advocate of student-centric learning and giving them choices as to which instructional activities they would like to engage. For their robotics hour each week, I am giving them the following choices with their goal of using five of the robotics to complete five of the tasks provided.

For those who haven’t come across it before, it was borne out of the idea of Google’s 20% time. This is time that is set aside for employees as part of Google’s drive (get it? #pun) to innovate within its ranks. Famously, such ideas as Gmail have come from a 20% time project by one of Google’s employees. Genius Hour is meant to inspire and give children the opportunity to develop and build some of the most important skills in learning around the idea of collaboration, creativity and innovation, communication and critical thinking.

Are you on the fence on whether or not you should introduce a programming curriculum next school year? The easy answer is that you ABSOLUTELY should! But, for those who are not as easily convinced, we have put together a list of the top 10 reasons why we believe coding should be taught to every child.

The gap between the skills people learn and the skills people need is becoming more obvious, as traditional learning falls short of equipping students with the knowledge they need to thrive, according to the World Economic Forum report New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning Through Technology.

Today's job candidates must be able to collaborate, communicate and solve problems – skills developed mainly through social and emotional learning (SEL). Combined with traditional skills, this social and emotional proficiency will equip students to succeed in the evolving digital economy.

When we started the intention was to make it distinct from the NMC New Horizon reports by focusing on pedagogy. I think, to be honest, in those early ones there was probably a technology focus still, but as it’s progressed it has really moved away from this to more pedagogy, socially focused issues.

A good guide to current methodologies defined and how their collective impact supports a 'new' paradigm of teaching and learning with pedagogy as the key to delivering, with technology and technological resources as important tools.

Teaching London Computing in conjunction with cs4fn and support from Google have produced a series of fun activities and booklets based around puzzles that teach computing topics and computational thinking for use in the classroom, suitable for all ages.

Do the puzzles and develop computational thinking skills as well as learn about some core computing topics.

Today, the blackboard has become a whiteboard; chalk has become a magic marker; the slates that students used have been replaced by notebooks; and classes have sometimes gotten smaller. Little else has changed. True, some schools are providing their students with laptops, and teachers are increasingly using technology and encouraging collaboration. But the methods are essentially the same—with the teacher dictating learning.

The Turtle Art project, and the concept of “doing” or “making” before any explicit instruction has been given, is part of the school’s attempt to shake up its teaching. Lighthouse Community Charter has to cover the same standard curriculum as district schools, so teachers have to choose carefully the times when they’ll spend a little more time and creativity on a difficult subject.

Digital tools and software can play a role in learning and doing as discovery. Teaching can also involve solving problems without digital tools. John Dewey was pointing us in this direction regardless of tools available.

When indigenous curricula and provincial curricula are overlayed with each other, they move us beyond the classroom and digital tools.

"Peering up, a teacher asked me, “What are we going to use it for?” as I flew our shiny new drone up between the umbrellas on the quad, past the roof of the gym, and into the low scattered clouds. The camera projected back to my iPhone, and I could see the newly planted trees in our quad, the only green for miles in the Mondrian concrete grid that is our local community.

The students and teachers in the quad all looked up too, shielding their eyes to see the drone fly. Our custodians pulled up in their cart, and my assistant principal whooped like one of the middle schoolers on my campus.

It’s my job this year to answer questions like the one above. As a teacher on special assignment currently serving as curriculum coordinator for my school, I get to learn what’s coming our way and devise methods of implementation. I specialize in technology and project-based learning, and I began thinking about implementing the drone immediately upon hearing that our district had purchased it.

And I’m not the only one thinking about this issue. In the book Drones in Education, the International Society for Technology in Education touts the engagement factor but also sees academic potential in using drones. To guide schools to successfully implement the technology, the book promotes the SOAR model, which stands for Safety (ethics and legal use), Operation (flight and maintenance), Active learning (engagement in problem solving), and Research (practical applications)."

"The music is pumping, the crowd is cheering and people are dancing. This is science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), but not as you know it. I’m at the Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre as an invited judge for the 2016 Australia Regional FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The competition is for students aged around 14-18 who, with the help of mentors and teachers, have six weeks (or significantly less in several cases) to design, build and program a robot for a designated challenge. This would be a difficult task even …"

Historically, a learner’s educational opportunities have been limited by the resources found within the walls of a school. Technology-enabled learning allows learners to tap resources and expertise anywhere in the world, starting with their own communities.

Simulation-based learning allows us to play in a highly immersive environment that reflects aspects of the real world. In virtual simulations, we can explore and create with much lower stakes than we would encounter in the real world. Questions of “What if?” flourish in a virtual simulation as we create and experience new possibilities with increasing realism. With smartphones making access to virtual reality easier and easier, virtual simulations can now become part of place-based learning in the classroom.

Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand. The projects teach students how to make a stable product, use tools, think about the needs of another, solve challenges, overcome setbacks and stay motivated on a long-term problem. The projects also teach students to build on the ideas of others, vet sources, generate questions, deeply analyze topics, and think creatively and analytically. Many of those same qualities are goals of the Common Core State Standards. (What Does ‘Design Thinking’ Look Like in School?)

I use the following activities to introduce elementary students to the design thinking process. The ultimate goal is for the learners to work on their own, self-selected problems in which they will apply the design thinking.

Introducing the general design process to elementary student occurs through showing the following video about the engineering process:

I think this is a great intro to design, but this is a tad over the heads of our K-2 students or special needs. We really need to break it down into one step at a time and not give them everything at once.

The challenge for teachers is to build this understanding in our students. Our task is to enable their intelligence by helping them to understand the habits of mind and to then empower our students to make intelligent choices about the habits they deploy.

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